TITLE: Phantom Frames-The Distance Between Seeing and Recording

This series is an attempt to reconsider the meaning of the snapshot in an age of surveillance and image saturation, by looking through small fragments of mirrors drifting within urban space. By salvaging scenes that exist only inside mirrors, it quietly suggests—tinged with subtle humor—that the world can never be seen except indirectly.

Side mirrors and convex traffic mirrors scattered throughout the city are devices originally installed to monitor danger and prevent accidents. By capturing fleeting images that accidentally fall into these reflective surfaces, the series seeks the point where the impersonal gaze of surveillance cameras intersects with the subjective vision of the street photographer. Photographing not the reality outside the frame but only its secondary image becomes an act of recalibrating the distance between seeing and recording. Rather than emphasizing a contrast between the reflected image and its surrounding environment, the work deliberately refuses such a juxtaposition, securing expanses of black negative space in order to isolate and bring the motif into quiet prominence.

By narrowing down the indiscriminate flow of images gathered by surveillance systems, selecting a single moment, and isolating it within fields of black negative space, the work aims to reveal not the violence of vision but the small, latent narratives and presences that quietly inhabit the city.

AUTHOR: Asako Naruto (Spain)

Born in Japan, Asako is a Madrid-based photographer specializing in street photography. After studying design at an art university in Tokyo, she pursued a specialization in art history at Nagoya University. She has been based in Madrid since 2005 for her Ph.D. research.

Her work has gained international recognition, winning the Grand Prix for two consecutive years at both the Paris International Street Photo Awards and the B&W International Awards, as well as 1st Place at the Fine Art Photography Awards. To date, she has received over 50 international photography awards.

In 2025, she was named Best Photographer of the Year in the Street Photography category at 35AWARDS and served as an international juror representing Spain.

In 2024, she was invited to exhibit at ART-ICON Paris, alongside work by David Lynch.
Her first monograph, All the Fading Words, will be published in 2025.